Unwilling to see their adventure ended, they milled about for another twenty minutes before they departed.

Scarlett and Rosemary made up a bed for Ashley on the parlor floor.

Rosemary said, "Prissy! Find an old sheet and tear it into strips, about" — Rosemary held her hands four inches apart — "so wide. Dilcey, fetch warm water and soap.”

When she and Rosemary were alone, Scarlett said, "What did they think they were doing?”

Rosemary said, "Some of Ashley's ribs are cracked and his throat is swelled nearly closed. I believe his ankle is broken.”

After Mammy got Suellen to take a dose of laudanum and put the widow to bed, she and Prissy washed Will's body and dressed him in his Sunday suit.

Young Dr. Bryan was establishing his practice, and he made a point of noting that, although a native Georgian, he'd studied medicine in Richmond. He set Ashley's ankle and made a wintergreen poultice for his throat.

Diffident while doctoring, he was assertive with his reckoning.

"Ten dollars? My goodness, Doctor. Where did you serve in the War?”

"Mrs. Butler," the doctor replied, "I was thirteen when the War ended.”

At twilight in Tara's little graveyard, Pork dug Will Benteen's grave.

Scarlett said, "It isn't deep enough. Pork, you're the only man left. Dig deeper.”

When Scarlett returned to the house, Suellen Benteen was waiting for her. Scarlett's sister's face was raw from crying. "When my Will told me you were coming home to Tara, I told Will we should go away. 'Tara will be Scarlett's,' I said. 'It won't be our home anymore.' I begged my Will to leave. I told him, 'My sister Scarlett has never been anything but trouble.' You stole Frank Kennedy from me and you got Frank killed. Now you got my Will killed, too." She burst into anguished sobs. "What am I going to do without Will? Dear God, what will I do?”

Scarlett went upstairs, where, still dressed in rumpled finery, she fell on her bed and slept dreamlessly until her eyes snapped open in the stark light of morning and everything came flooding back.

In later years, Scarlett remembered only fragments of the next days: the coffin maker rattling up the drive with his toe pincher bouncing in the wagon; the children whispering past Suellen's closed bedroom door. Neighbor women brought food nobody wanted to eat and neighbor men did Will's chores.

Rosemary tended Ashley behind the parlor's closed door while mourners trooped through the dining room, where Will Benteen was laid out.

An expressionless Suellen O'Hara Benteen received those who would have consoled her. At her side, Scarlett understood vital bonds had been severed; henceforth, she and Suellen would be sisters in name only.

It was hot. The roses heaped on Will's coffin in such profusion didn't entirely disguise the smell.

Will Benteen had been a lapsed Baptist, but since Jonesboro's only Baptist church was the African Baptist, he was buried by the Methodist preacher, who afterward invited Scarlett to next Sunday's service.

"I'm a Catholic," Scarlett replied.

"That's all right," the preacher said cheerfully. "We welcome every sinner!”

After the burying, Suellen Benteen and her children left for Charleston, where'd they'd bide with Aunt Eulalie. As their wagon rattled down the lane, Scarlett went to the horse barn to feed the horses.

With the leather feed bucket Will and Sam had used for so many years, she poured feed into the long trough.

Sleek dark heads bent and chewed as if nothing at all had happened.

Scarlett whispered, "How can Tara live without Will?" One horse lifted its head, as if trying to understand. He twitched his tail and went back to eating.

Silent, hot tears streamed down Scarlett's face until she could see nothing — nothing at all.

After Ashley's fever broke, he was too weak to go home. He spoke quietly when spoken to, volunteered nothing, and never asked about Will. Rosemary sat with him in the dim, quiet parlor and fed him broth and weak tea. For reasons Rosemary never fathomed, she told Ashley things. In her quiet, calm voice, meticulously identifying the year, month, and circumstances, Rosemary Butler Haynes Ravanel told Ashley Wilkes about walking out the back door of the little house in Franklin, Tennessee, knowing the body lying in the frozen garden was her husband John. "I only loved him after it was too late," Rosemary said. She spoke about her darling Meg; how Meg had loved horses and been betrayed by a horse. "Tecumseh was afraid. How can you blame a horse for being afraid?" Rosemary told Ashley about finding Andrew's bloody boots. They were English boots and Andrew had once been proud of them. She told the silent Ashley things she had never told anyone — not Melanie, not even her brother Rhett. She told him how lonely she'd been growing up at Broughton. She told him how much she'd missed her brother Rhett. She told Ashley about her pony, Jack.

Sheriff's Talbot's office was a cool underground den.

Scarlett demanded, "Why haven't you arrested them?”

"Who should I arrest, Mrs. Butler?”

Scarlett wanted to shake the blandness off the sheriff's face. She pushed words past her teeth. "The Watlings! Isaiah and Josie Watling murdered Will Benteen!”

The sheriff rolled his chair against the wall and leaned back to examine the fly-specked ceiling. He grunted, bent, and spat into the spittoon.

"Well?" Scarlett demanded. "When are you going to arrest them?”

"I reckon, Mrs. Butler, I reckon there's two ways of lookin' at this. You got your 'pinion and some folks got 'nother 'pinion.”

Scarlett blinked. "Whatever are you talking about?”

"Some folks say Mr. Wilkes started that fight.”

"They'd shot my horses, burned my Atlanta home, and frightened off my field workers. Sheriff, they intended to murder my husband!”

"Did they? I always figured Mr. Butler could take care of hisself.

Didn't I hear your husband was in Europe somewheres? I don't know that the Watlings ever been to Europe — leastways they never said they had.”

Sheriff Talbot went in his drawer for a leather sap. He got up, plucked his hat from the hat rack, and rolled it in his hands. "Mrs. Butler, some folks b'lieve — and I ain't sayin' I disagree — that Ashley Wilkes started that fight and Will Benteen murdered Archie Flytte once Flytte was getting the better of Wilkes.”

"Ashley was defending Tara. Those Watlings — “

"B'lieve you mentioned that, Mrs. Butler. B'lieve you mentioned that several times. But you never showed me no proof." He set his hat on the back of his head so it framed his face like a picture frame. "Mrs. Butler, I don't mean to hurt your feelin's, but I am inclined to b'lieve that Mr. Wilkes attacked Archie Flytte unprovoked and when Archie resisted, Will Benteen shot Archie. Josie Watling killed Benteen trying to save Archie's life. Least that's how I see it. You might see things different." He slipped the sap into his trouser pocket "Now, ma'am, I got to get to Darktown. Another cuttin'. Ain't it peculiar? Niggers cut each other, where a white man'd use a gun. You reckon that's because they're more primitive?”

"The Watlings — “

"Won't bother you no more, Mrs. Butler. The Watlings done left Clayton County. Josie and old Isaiah lit out after the fight and nobody's seen 'em since. Weren't no Flyttes willin' to bury Archie, so the County buried him.”

He shrugged. "Far as this sheriff's office is concerned, everything's square.

Archie's dead, Will Benteen's dead, and the Watlings are gone. Josie Watling was always kiddin' about Jesse James. Said he rode with the James brothers during the War." Sheriff Talbot opened the door to show Scarlett out. "You reckon next time we hear about the Watlings, they'll be robbin' trains?" The sheriff locked the door behind them and peered at the cloudless sky. "Darned if it ain't dry." He added, "Watlings was a good family.

Hard workers. I swear Isaiah Watling near worked himself half to death tryin' to make a go of that hardscrabble farm. Sorrowful, ain't it — how things turn out?”

When she got back to Tara, Scarlett rode into the river fields. Will's furrows between the cotton ridges had been smooth red clay. Now they were greened with weeds. Oat sedge tangled the ridges where her cotton plants, each set eight inches from its neighbor, turned hopefully toward the beckoning sun.

Before daybreak next morning, Scarlett was in the horse barn. The work harness was so heavy, she dragged it over the horse's rump, and the names were an awkward nightmare. She guessed which straps to buckle and rebuckled what seemed too loose or tight.

When she came into the house, Taras people were in the kitchen, the children poking sleepily at their breakfast. Scarlett took fried side meat off the counter and ate without sitting down. She said, "Now Will is gone, we'll have to do without him. Lord knows, there's enough work to go around.

Mammy, you'll tend Ashley. Ella, honey, stay here and help Mammy. I don't want you taking one of your fits. Everyone else into the fields. Yes, Pork, I know what you're going to say: 'But Miss Scarlett, I'ze been a valet all my life!' " Scarlett's mimicry was so accurate, even Pork cracked a smile.

It was cool at first. Rosemary and the youngest children worked a row.

Dilcey, Wade, Pork, and Prissy each had a row. Scarlett took Will's job: plowing up one long row, down another, steering a plow whose tall wooden handles were whitened from strong men's sweat. The horse knew its job and marched forward phlegmatically, but the plow handles jerked and bucked and whenever the plow hit a rock, the handles kicked against Scarlett's small hands until her palms ached.

Sun was the enemy.

Leather traces lay across Scarlett's shoulders as if she were in harness with the horse. She stumbled and turned her ankles on the rough ground.

Sweat stung her eyes and half-blinded her. The dust the horse raised mixed with her sweat and caked her face.

At noon, they stopped under the shade trees beside the river. When Scarlett knelt and splashed cool water on her cheeks and neck, it ran over her breasts. Rosemary knelt beside her. "Vail Georgia planters surely do live a life of ease.”

In the long afternoon, Dilcey began a chant Scarlett had heard all her life.

"It's a long John," Dilcey sang. Prissy answered, "It's a long John.”

"He's long gone.”

"He's long gone.”

"Mister John John.”

"Mister John John.”

"Old big-eyed John. Oh, John John ...”

Stumbling behind the horse, fighting the plow handles, Scarlett breathed in time with that ancient African measure.

They placed Ashley on folded blankets, with his plastered ankle propped on the tailboard of Twelve Oaks' wagon.

Ashley's fine gray eyes looked into Rosemary's. "Thank you for...

talking to me.”

"That day at the market," Rosemary said, "you did the best you could.”

Ashley Wilkes closed up. "I got Will killed.”

It clouded over the afternoon they finished hoeing. Big-bellied rain clouds rolled over the horizon.

Taras dusty, sweaty field hands were on the porch drinking cool water when two riders appeared at the bottom of the lane.

Scarlett leapt to her feet as if she'd been stung, ran into the house, and pounded up the stairs like a schoolgirl.

In her bedroom, she kicked off her brogans, dropped her sweat-stained dress in a heap, dipped a washcloth into the water pitcher, and attended to her arms, face, and breasts. She snatched a fine green silk gown from the chifforobe, snapped and tied it. She hadn't time for corset or shoes.

Downstairs again, Scarlett emerged barefoot as a grinning Pork took her husband's reins.

There were new deep lines at the corners of his mouth and under his eyes. Scarlett yearned to hurl herself into his arms, but she wasn't that easy.

"Pork, it isn't the Second Coming. It's only Mr. Butler come home.”

Rhett's hungry eyes devoured her. "I thought you might need a Savior.”

"You look like you've been through hell.”

"There were one or two bad days." His smile was so warm, so knowing.

He swung down, scooped Ella up and set her on his hip. Scarlett took an involuntary step toward him but dug in her heels. How dare he be so confident, so sure of her. Scarlett tossed her head. "And how was Paris?”

Rhett's warm smile became his too-familiar infuriating grin and he laughed. The children — it had been so long since she'd heard the children laugh — the children laughed with him.